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Wednesday, June 16, 2010

#BP Clean Up Effort Includes Hand Hygiene Hazard

It seems that the folks at BP are not only confused about how to stop thousands of barrels of oil from gushing into the Gulf, they're equally confused when it comes to providing clean-up workers with proper hand hygiene products.

According to a local company contracted by BP to provide clean-up supplies, "They (BP) sent us an 18-wheeler filled with alcohol hand sanitizer, and those folks didn't know that alcohol gels don't "clean" hands, and in fact, they don't even penetrate dirt.

The executive from the local company continued to say "..The instructions on the alcohol sanitizer bottles say "wash hands before applying", something that makes no sense to us 'country-folk' down here when considering that workers in the field have no way to wash their hands!"

When it was pointed out that alcohol gels actually irritate the skin and as a result, increase the risk of exposure to bacteria, the executive stated, "That's why we told BP that the product they want us to use isn't going to work any better than the things they've tried to cap the well...So now we're replacing that stuff with an alcohol-free hand sanitizer; the water-based products used by the Navy and Coast Guard and clean the dirt off the skin, and kill the bacteria without killing the skin..."

2 comments:

Juliet Robertson said...

Hello

I'm looking for information about hand hygiene procedures and products for pre-school children who go on trips to places where there is no running water, e.g. woods.

What are the dos and don't in your opinion?

I'm interested in both outdoor nurseries where children are outside 80% time all year round and also nurseries where the children visit a wood on a weekly basis for a morning.

Many thanks
Juliet

PS I looked to see if you had any relevant posts but couldn't see one.

Anonymous said...

Tiz enough to make you scream me thinks. Recently there has been much ado in the healthy media about the dangers of hand sanitizers. Plain soap and water is healthier and more effective.

I feel so sorry for all the people affected by this disaster.... One wonders if the 20 MILLION will be sufficient....... and of course people have every right to fear the consequences of this terrible disaster... and for years to come as well. BP is the one caught out in this mess, but it could very easilly have been any one of the other BIG OIL Corporations. They admitted as much a few days ago, and said the only way to prevent this from happening is to cease Deepwater Drilling. I think it could go further than that - and spend all their trillions on studying new oil free technologies.

Did You Know?
BP engineers alerted federal regulators at the Minerals Management Service that they were having difficulty controlling the Macondo well (Deepwater Horizon) six weeks before the disaster, according to e- mails released by the Energy and Commerce Committee.

“I don’t think this would have happened on Exxon’s watch,” Tom Bower, author of “The Squeeze: Oil, Money and Greed in the 21st Century,” said in a June 11 Bloomberg Television interview. “They’d be much more careful and much more conscious of the need to supervise subcontractors.”

WELL excuse me your sainted Exxon....... and Chevron and ConocoPhillips.

Let’s just take a look at a few of your past misdemeanours, and then we can consider again – if the moratorium on deepwater drilling should be lifted, and place it all firmly back into your nice clean hands!

http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/06/fairy-stories-about-oil-companies.html